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Lights, camera, inaction

Androulla Vassiliou, the European commissioner for education, culture and sport, found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time last week.

She was in Greece when the Greek government announced the closure of the national public broadcast service, ERT. Indeed, she had meetings scheduled with the broadcaster on Thursday (13 June) that were swiftly cancelled. She sent out a message on Twitter lamenting the cancellation and asking, “How can Democracy function without a public TV & Radio?”

However, the official Commission line is that the closure is a matter for the Greek government. The divided government blames the need for (EU-supervised) austerity.

Despite a furious letter signed by the head of nearly every member of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) demanding that the station be reinstated, the Commission confined itself to observing that generally it “supports the role of public broadcasting”.

As luck would have it, Vassiliou was in Athens on Sunday night (16 June) for the annual awards ceremony of ‘Europa Nostra’, sharing the stage with opera singer Placido Domingo.